In the drilling and completion industry, the formation of boreholes for the purpose of production or injection of fluid is common. The boreholes are used for exploration or extraction of natural resources such as hydrocarbons—oil and gas, and/or controlled injection of produced fluids (water, CO2, etc.) for disposal, reservoir pressure maintenance or sequestration. Well construction, and subsequent production therefrom and monitoring thereof, involve expensive, time-consuming operations and personnel having varying degrees of knowledge with respect to certain facets of the operations. It is not always economically or operationally feasible to provide subject matter experts (“SMEs”) onsite for the entirety of such operations.
Complex processes include various phases and a variety of serial and parallel steps performed in each phase. Pertinent data or information is collected during the various process steps and used separately or in conjunction with other real-time or historical information to make decisions relating to the process. Often different individuals make decisions and perform different steps and at different locations, that can have a bearing on the outcome of other steps in the process. Sometimes different security levels are associated with different personnel, in that restrictions are imposed to filter which persons are privy to what type of data and which persons are authorized to make what decisions. One such process is the process of recovering hydrocarbons (oil and gas) from subsurface formations. Such a process includes drilling of a well or wellbore at a selected drilling site from a drilling platform, completing the wellbore for production, producing hydrocarbons from the competed well, monitoring production and performing secondary recovery operations (fracturing, stimulation, workover etc.). The drilling process alone generally involves various entities, such as one or more oil companies as the primary operator, drilling contractors to perform drilling operations, service companies to perform different operations based on the respective company's services or proprietary technologies, regulatory bodies and various other subcontractors. Decisions are made and action executed by a variety of personnel prior to and during the well life cycle, planning, drilling, completions, production and abandonment activities. For example, the oil company engineers may make early decisions relating to the location and profile of the well based on a variety of data, including, but not limited to, seismic surveys, data from nearby wells, environmental impact studies, and governmental regulations. Drilling contractor personnel perform drilling operations and make many decisions relating to the drilling operations based on real-time and other information, including, but not limited to, decisions made by the operators, downhole and surface sensor measurements, information relating to nearby wells, information received from remote locations, such as service companies, and measurements provided by service companies. The drilling site includes a platform, a communications and control room with a variety of screens that display images of measurements of parameters relating to a drill string used for drilling the wellbore and parameters relating to the formation through which the well is being drilled. Decisions are made in meetings held among specialists from one or more entities and are then communicated to the platform. Communications among various personnel occur over different communication modes, such as audio conferencing, video conferencing, electronic mail (email), etc., and such information is available in fragmented form. Some of the real-time information is not captured. Additionally, various types of interrelated information are not available in time-synchronized form and integrated or correlated form for real-time use or for performing analysis.
The art would be receptive to improved or alternative systems and methods for providing real-time maintenance, trouble shooting, and process assurance for the oilfield.